I'm currently considering getting a Kindle with the offer currently running on Amazon, but after doing some research, I'd like to ask this question.

I know the between charge life is pretty good, it can go a few days between charges depending on use. But I was looking at the page on Amazon for the replacement battery and there are numerous entries where reviewers claim their battery will no longer hold a charge after 3-5 months. Has anyone else experienced such short battery life? I would hate to spend so much on this device and have to purchase 3-4 batteries each year at $20 each.

This was one thing my husband and I argued about before I got the kindle. He was so worried about it, I ordered an extra battery 'just in case'. 4 months later, its still sitting in the drawer, never used. I don't turn on the whispernet unless I'm downloading books, and recharge as soon as the battery shows 3/4 full. Im wondering if maybe some of the first ones had issues.....?

I've only had mine for a few weeks, but I've charged once in about 2 weeks...I only turn on whispernet to d/l books, and then i usually leave it on for a few hours (figuring it can back up my books and do all that stuff) and then turn it back off again. I charged it when it hit 3/4 full...but I might wait until it hits 1/4 next time to see how long it takes.

I haven't heard a single report here of anyone having to replace the battery in their Kindle unless it was bad at the beginning. There are quite a few of us that ordered back in November when it first came out. I use mine pretty much every day. The wireless I use maybe for a few minutes a few times a week. I've had the Kindle for 9 months and the frequency of my recharges has stayed 1-2x/week. From what I can tell, that's par. I do recall a couple reports from folks who couldn't get their Kindles to hold a charge at all and Amazon replaced them but that's a different story.

I haven't heard a single report here of anyone having to replace the battery in their Kindle unless it was bad at the beginning. There are quite a few of us that ordered back in November when it first came out. I use mine pretty much every day. The wireless I use maybe for a few minutes a few times a week. I've had the Kindle for 9 months and the frequency of my recharges has stayed 1-2x/week. From what I can tell, that's par. I do recall a couple reports from folks who couldn't get their Kindles to hold a charge at all and Amazon replaced them but that's a different story.

I believe the posts about the bad battery life were on the Kindle reviews, not the discussion pages. But again, I haven't had any problems or complaints about the battery life.

Now, my thoughts are these. Even tho Amazon says you can put your kindle to sleep, and that it doesn't drain the battery, I always turn it off when I"m not using it. I wonder if putting it to sleep doesn't drain the battery faster? Or are people leaving their whispernet on all the time which is guaranteed to drain it? At any rate, it seems to be a 'hit and miss' with the battery.

I rarely turn mine off (it's usually turned off by accident). I turn on whispernet in the morning just long enough to download my newspaper subscription. I can easily go a week without recharging and closer to 2 weeks is not that unusual. If I feel I'm going to be using whispernet for along time, I'll plug into power while I surf.

I've only let my battery run down low enough to get a warning message once as an experiment. I wanted to see how well and fast the Zire USB cable would charge the Kindle (thanks TallMomof2). It works nearly as fast as the AC charger.

This was one thing my husband and I argued about before I got the kindle. He was so worried about it, I ordered an extra battery 'just in case'. 4 months later, its still sitting in the drawer, never used. I don't turn on the whispernet unless I'm downloading books, and recharge as soon as the battery shows 3/4 full. Im wondering if maybe some of the first ones had issues.....?

We have 2 Kindles - one we've had 7+ months and the other we've had 4+ months and we have no battery issue with either. As above, I bought a replacement battery (and a replacement power cord) and have never used it. Much like the memory card, which I bought and really don't use.

Okay, I want to bring this up again, since it's about a year that I've had mine. I seem to be getting some degredation in battery life, lately. I have done some fairly large downloads, lately, so there may be indexing stuff going on. Yesterday, though, I was reading most of the day and was down to a quarter by the end of the day. It seems that the battery had been draining faster. Anyone else having this?

I'm probably going to get a new battery from Amazon, which, one a year ain't bad, if you ask me.

The Kindle's "off" switch does not actually turn the device off but just blanks the screen(same as Sony Reader). If you want to really power off the device, use the reset hole.

I think you're completely mistaken. When you turn off the switch on the back, it dismounts from a PC if you have it connected, and when you turn it back on, it goes through the same boot process as if you had reset it using the button. If it was merely asleep with the screen blank, as you state, it should simply take 2-3 seconds to redisplay the page you were on instead of going through the entire startup process.